Speaking

Local regulations complicated the stormwater best management practices (BMPs) and stream restoration for a $32 million transportation project in a highly-urbanized area within the City of Columbus, Ohio. To meet the requirements of the City’s 2012 Stormwater Drainage Manual (SWDM), the project required design, redesign, negotiation, and development of creative stormwater BMPs.

This presentation will detail the BMPs considered which include detention basins, underground storage, retrofit of hydrodynamic separator, and vegetated swales. Ultimately, an existing dry detention basin outside of the project area was retrofitted for compensatory stormwater quantity and quality control, supplemented by vegetated swales within the project area. In addition to navigating the BMPs, this project required the relocation of a small headwater stream segment “captured” within the existing roadway right-of way. This presentation will review how this minor adjustment was successfully incorporated into the project design, despite presenting significant technical, permitting, and mitigation challenges.

Current stormwater regulations require that controls for the quantity and quality of stormwater runoff be implemented as a part of any new site development project. Presenters Brian Tornes, PE and Jennifer Conroy, PE, CPESC will be joined by Carrie Morrow from Franklin County Metro Parks to discuss how Burgess & Niple partnered with Metro Parks to use existing site soils and topography and restore 6,000 acres of agricultural land to swamp forest, wet prairie, and associated upland habitats.  

This work has improved the overall quality of water entering the Big Darby Watershed and reduced the volume of stormwater runoff. It has also resulted in the creation of prime wildlife habitat for amphibians and birds. The reconstructed wetlands have been designed to meet quantity and quality control requirements placed on any site development project and meet the minimum control measure (MCM) goals of the MS4. They will also discuss the importance of ongoing maintenance necessary to manage a restoration site of this magnitude while keeping invasive species under control.